Coomaraswamy's field work between 1902 and 1906 earned him a doctor of science for his study of Ceylonese mineralogy, and prompted the formation of the Geological Survey of Ceylon which he initially directed.

By 1906, Coomaraswamy had made it his mission to educate the West about Indian art, and was back in London with a large collection of photographs, actively seeking out artists to try to influence.

He knew he could not rely on museum curators or other members of the cultural establishment – in 1908 he wrote "The main difficulty so far seems to have been that Indian art has been studied so far only by archaeologists.

By 1909, he was firmly acquainted with Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill, the city's two most important early Modernists, and soon both of them had begun to incorporate Indian aesthetics into their work.

Shortly thereafter, on 18 November 1930, Coomaraswamy married Argentine Luisa Runstein, 28 years younger, who was working as a society photographer under the professional name Xlata Llamas.

While in India, he was part of the literary circle around Rabindranath Tagore, and he contributed to the "Swadeshi" movement, an early phase of the struggle for Indian independence.

At the same time, he amassed an unmatched collection of Rajput and Moghul paintings, which he took with him to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, when he joined its curatorial staff in 1917.

Through 1932, from his base in Boston, he produced two kinds of publications: brilliant scholarship in his curatorial field but also graceful introductions to Indian and Asian art and culture, typified by The Dance of Shiva, a collection of essays that remain in print to this day.

His books and essays on art and culture, symbolism and metaphysics, scripture, folklore and myth, and still other topics, offer a remarkable education to readers who accept the challenges of his resolutely cross-cultural perspective and insistence on tying every point he makes back to sources in multiple traditions.

The analysis of both texts and symbols across a wide variety of cultures and time periods allowed him to see below the surface of local interpretations and religious exclusivism to locate the bedrock of tradition.

[24] His extensive knowledge of ancient languages allowed him access to primary sources and his understanding of metaphysics helped him discern the deeper meanings that other scholars often missed.

By “folklore” we mean the whole and consistent body of culture which has been handed down, not in books but by word of mouth and in practice, from time beyond the reach of historical research, in the form of legends, fairy tales, ballads, games, toys, crafts, medicine, agriculture, and other rites, and forms of social organization, especially those that we call “tribal.” This is a cultural complex independent of national and even racial boundaries, and of remarkable similarity throughout the world.

[26] A second point of conflict was the obsessive tendency of Western scholarship to divide cultures, religions, and time periods into discrete categories in order to fit into academic organizational and mental structures.

Ideas like this did not go over well with other scholars and his correspondence has its share of angry or condescending responses to his work which he deflected with a combination of erudition, tact, and humor.

[29] A third issue that raised his ire was the racism inherent in the Western world's criticism and misinterpretation of traditional and tribal cultures, attitudes tied closely to literacy and the attendant idea of progress.

[31] Unlike Rene Guenon and others who shared many of his understandings, Coomaraswamy was not content to describe traditional ideas from the inside out, in metaphysical terms alone..

[33] The comparative method has achieved a good deal of success in linguistics but its application to culture had rarely gone beyond mere documentation before Ananda Coomaraswamy.

Christian art, for example, begins with the representation of deity by abstract symbols, which may be geometrical, vegetable, or theriomorphic, and are devoid of any sentimental appeal whatever.

Still later, the form is sentimentalised; the features of the crucified are made to exhibit human suffering, the type is completely humanised, and where we began with the shape of humanity as an analogical representation of the idea of God, we end with the portrait of the artist's mistress posing as the Madonna and a representation of an all-too-human baby; the Christ is no longer a man-God, but the sort of man we can approve of.

He was fond of quoting the curator, John Lodge: “From the Stone Age until now, quelle dégringolade.”[36] Coomaraswamy spent a lot of his time documenting themes and images that appeared to be very old, given their widespread distribution.

Major areas of study included: Coomaraswamy observed these symbols in different cultures and time periods, both in religious writings and in folklore.

"[40] While serving as a curator to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the latter part of his life, he devoted his work to the explication of traditional metaphysics and symbolism.

His writings of this period are filled with references to Plato, Plotinus, Clement, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, Shankara, Eckhart, Rumi and other mystics.

[citation needed] Coomaraswamy built a bridge between East and West that was designed to be two-way: among other things, his metaphysical writings aimed at demonstrating the unity of the Vedanta and Platonism.